A program connecting surplus from Florida farms to local foodbanks now has $38 million in funding from the state next fiscal year.
Farmers Feeding Florida takes surplus produce and proteins from farmers and producers across the state to then give to local food banks. Over two years, the program will receive $76 million from the state.
Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida’s CEO and President Derrick Chubbs said the additional state funding to the program will help the food bank give more to the community.
“This is a variety of food. It's not just produce,” Chubbs said “It's dairy. It's protein. It's the produce. This helps us bridge an ever-growing gap that we continue to see based on what our neighbors are experiencing every single day with increased pricing of food, insurance, housing, and the like. The gap is growing wider, and this program helps us narrow that gap.”
The food bank provides enough food to support over 300,000 meals a day to people across Orange, Osceola, Brevard, Volusia, Seminole, Lake and Marion counties.
From July 2025 to June 2026, the food bank helped distribute 9.3 million pounds of Florida produce and proteins to the counties it serves.
“We're not going to food bank our way out of hunger,” Chubbs said. “There's plenty of food. We do not have a food problem in the country. We have a distribution challenge in the country in getting that food to where it belongs…We can't do this by ourselves, and programs like this proves that multiple entities working together can make a significant difference or significant impact to the hunger problem we have here in Central Florida.”
Florida Republican Senator Jason Brodeur said he’s proud of the efforts from the state and this initiative.
“This is where the rubber meets the road, it's so easy to sit in a big building and pat yourself on the back because we were all voted to provide the funding necessary to do this. But getting to see it actually happen means you know that that's actually going to work…This is so immediate and so tangible that you get to come in here, you see the food itself, you identify it, it's exactly what you could get in the grocery store, and it getting on trucks and going right out to the community.”
Second Harvest is one of Central Florida Public Media’s financial sponsors but has no editorial control over its content.
